Kropotkin 's Memorial Hall Speech

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KROPOTKIN’S SPEECH

(Memorial Hall, October 2 1st).

The execution of Ferrer has provoked in Europe
and America a general feeling of indignation.

Even at St ‘ Petersburg, under the bayonets of
Nicholas II. a big indignation meeting was held at
the University.

Were it not for the state of siege, scores of similar
meetings would have been held all over Russia.

This striking, spontaneous outburst of anti-clerical
feeling has filled with awe the ruling classes every-
where and especially in this country. For the last few
days the Conservative Press of London has ventilated
its fears and it is trying to throw cold water on the
movement of indignation,

The Conservative papers are afraid of that in-
dignation movement, and they do not conceal their
rears.

The Morning Post in its leader of October 18th, says*—

“The significance of all this lies in the evidence which it supplies ‘that
n, several countries of Western Europe there is growing a c ats ac
^ that l o°nT ,tself hos ! ile to Society and the Statf, read? Io give vent'
conseoueilies ' y • “ tllercb >' P ro P £1 ^te it, 'regardless of

^ h H Dm ly T d e-graph is still more outspoken : —

There has been nothing in our time”— we read in ils leader of
October 21st— more instructive of its sort than the way in which the
rexolufonary and ruffianly elements " -it is you. friends, y who are the
uffians- have combined to exploit the Ferrer tragedy There hat
been in all this a characteristic mixture of frantic excftal.iiitv R? f • •

calculation, and of that sheer, subversive

l a ,,d lf ? e Tsar attacked ’’—laments the Daily Telegraph—" in every

f ’ J,,st as Italian Socialists are attacking him now, just as the ‘ Reds’

Mi,tiVeVs ' ' 4" , ever> ; r'"" ry are King 1 Alfon'o and his

Ministers. . . . Sentimental perversity can no further go, and it will
destroy any society which indulges in it.”

Yv ell, friends, it is only this “sentimental perversity”
which spared you the shame of seeing Nicholas II. and
hts hangmen parading in the streets of London.

I hey learn nothing, these gentlemen— always at one
wrth reaction, with the hangmen all over the world.

VY e have seen it just lately. When, on the occasion of
the visit of the Tsar, a handful of brave men in Parlia-
ment and in the Press protested against the admission
o the hanging Tsar to these shores— what a chorus of
blame came from the Conservative Press!

Let the hangman be a Sultan, ora Tsar, or a most
Christum King, they are always ready to support him.

1 he arguments of the Conservative Press are twofold,
ne is, that the British Government has no right to
interfere in the internal affairs of Spain.

No right — they say, except when it is to annex, a
Cyprus, to occupy an Egypt, or to conquer a Pretoria.

Friends ! But is this the conception of the British
nation ?

No, I, an alien, loudly protest against this calumny.

1 know that “the rule of the Conservatives for the last
tw.enty years has done everything to destroy the good
reputation of the people of Britain.

But the feeling remains, and last Sunday it has shewn
what it thought of the bloodthirsty priesthood of Spain.

The British nation has over and over again interfered
with the internal affairs of Belgium, Italy, Austria,
France, in the Dreyfus affair, Turkey, nay Spain itself.

Not more than eight years ago, a British statesman
in Trafalgar Square saw the Spanish Ambassador to ask
him what truth there was in the statement of a Spaniard,
released from Montjuich, who stated that he had been
tortured in the Bastille of Alphonso XIII.

The Spanish Ambassador agreed first, and refused
next day, to have that man examined by two English
and two Spanish doctors.

However, two English doctors examined him, and
reported to a Trafalgar Square meeting the nature of
the horrible wounds ‘inflicted on that man by the Mont-
juich Inquisition.

The agitation in England, Germany, and France be-
came thereupon so violent, that finally sixteen men
condemned to hard labour on the strength of testimony
obtained in Montjuich under torture, were released.

We greeted them here, two of them had been tortured.

The Conservative papers and Sir Edward Grey
speak of no interference.

But were not the official festivities given to that
perjurer Nicholrs II. an interference in the internal
struggle that goes on in Russia?

The result of this patting on the back of Nicholas II.
you have seen to-day in the papers.

A province is torn from Finland, whose constitution
and integrity Nicholas II. had sworn on his oath to
maintain.

The second argument of the Conservative Press is
this : “ Ferrer was a bloody thirsty revolutionist and an
Atheist who wanted to destroy everything in Spain.”

If I had the time and the strength to tell you all
that the Spanish Government have done in Barcelona
W the last twelve years — Barcelona is the most
intelligent centre of Spain for the development of its
working class — if I could tell you all their infamies, you
would rise in a fury, and say that it is a pity that the

Barcelona uprising has not already overthrown that
shameless Government.

Barcelona has suffered terribly from that Government.
It was there that in 1896, they tortured the Anarchists;
there that for years in succession their police agents
—their Azeffs— deposited bombs in the working men’s
quarters, killing women and children, and accusing the
Anarchists of doing this. Those of you who have
read the English papers at that time, know that this
was proved at the trial of Rull.

And now, this Government, abhored and despised,
opened a war in Morocco for the enrichment of the
capitalists, which would cost scores of millions of
pounds and thousands of human lives. This was the
beginning of the Barcelona insurrection.

Ferrer is accused by the Conservative Press of having
taken a part in the uprising at Barcelona. But Ferror
has written that he took no part whatever in it, and
we must believe him.

Well, friends, perhaps we ought to regret it. If he,
and scores of men from the ‘intellectuals in Barcelona
had taken part in the movement of protest against the
war, there would have been perhaps less monasteries
burned, but the result might have been that the Mont-
juich Bastille of the present clerical and military
Government would have fallen, perhaps even without
the loss of a hundred and thirty men and women of
the people, killed by the troops of Alphonso.

Friends, don’t be misled by these haters of all
liberty and progress.

The truth is that the clericals had sworn Ferrer s
death, and they have attained their aim with the abetting
of all those who have done their best to discredit the
Ferrer movement in favour of Ferrer.

The fact is, that Ferrer was the soul of a great
educational movement in Spain. His tastes and
education did not lead him into the active agitation,
but to educational work.

After his last visit here he sent me two sets of all his
publications ; one for the British Museum, one for me.
It is all educational work of high value, not anti-
religious, but severely scientific. Suffice it to say that
Elisee Reclus — a man whose character and science
Europe respects, wrote the prefaces to several of the
educational books published by Ferrer.

To give you some idea of them, I take one of them.
It is on the origin of Christianity. It is an analysis'
of the book of Malvert, Science and Religion , and the
work of the great explorer of the history of Religions,
Burnouf popularised.

The eastern Buddhistic origin of Christianity, and
its relation to the worship of the Sun and its son, Agni,
the Fire, are told in this booklet in a quite popular
language.

And this book ends — with what ? With an apology
of Anarchism ? of Tolstoism? No ! With an apology
of Protestantism, which I for my account find even
too enthusiastic.

“The eloquent appeals of the two new apostles,
Luther and Calvin,” Ferrer wrote :

“ Provoked a true explosion of conscience among- the Arians. The
Reform tried to reconstitute primitive Christianity, freeing it from the
extraneous elements which disfigured it. With Protestantism disappeared
the sacerdotal hierarchy, . . and all fetishist worship.”

Speaking of the ethics of Protestantism, Ferrer wrote:

“ It is a collection of maxims legated by the philosophers of antiquity,
supported by a deep observation of man, his needs, his mission, his
duties, and his social organisation, for which modern science — hampered
as it is by the antagonism of interests, which presupposes the existence
of privileged usurpers and of the disinherited ones, compelled to work,
to exploitation, and to misery — it <as not yet able to substitute a superior
ethics which would give satisfaction to both the egotistic and the altruistic
feelings on the double basis of social hygiene and solidarity."

A few warm words follow, to tell what Prote'stan-
tism has done for the progressive evolution of mankind.

Then looking forward to centuries to come, Ferrer
said :

“ Protestantism also will go, like all other religions. When the great
number will be better initiated to scientific knowledge, the necessity of
an aid from the superior powers will be less felt. The necessity of
religions will disappear the day that men will be reasonable enough to
regulate themselves and their conduct in a social concord.”

And he concluded the book with these words :

‘‘ This magnificient evolution of the human intelligence, full of mysticism
at its beginnings, under the veil of religion, has progressed in advance
of religion and notwithstanding it. Science tends now to acquire the
supreme authority — Science and Truth, of which it is the expression and
the revelation. To it will belong in the future the directing power in the
world, instead of divinity, Science is the benefactor of the nations and
the liberator of mankind.”

These are the last words of that remarkable book,
“The Origin of Christianity, ” published in 1906 at
Barcelona, and this is the book for the publication of
which Ferrer has paid with his life under the bullets of
four soldiers in the ditch of the prison of Montjuich.

Now, he is dead, but it is our duty to resume his
work, to continue it, to spread it, to attack all the
fetishes which keep mankind under the yoke of State,.
Capitalism, and Superstition